7. Advocating the Poetics of Sound in the Cycle Les Nuits D´Été by Hector Berlioz

DOI: 10.2478/RAE-2018-0007 Review of Artistic Education no. 15 2018 59–73 7. ADVOCATING THE POETICS OF SOUND IN THE CYCLE LES NUITS D´ÉTÉ BY HECTOR BERLIOZ Loredana Viorica Iațeșen52 Abstract: By consulting monographies, musicological studies, specialty articles about the personality of romantic musician Hector Berlioz and implicitly linked to the relevance of his significant opera, one discovers researchers’ constant preoccupation for historical, stylistic, analytical, hermeneutical comments upon aspects related to established scores (the Fantastic, Harold in Italy symphonies, dramatic legend The Damnation of Faust, dramatic symphony Romeo and Juliet, the Requiem, etc.). Out of his compositions, it is remarkable that the cycle Les nuits d´été was rarely approached from a musicological point of view, despite the fact that it is an important opus, which inaugurates the genre of the orchestral lied at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of last century. In this study, we set out to compose as complete as possible an image of this work, both from an analytic-stylistic point of view by stressing the text-sound correspondences and, above all, from the perspective of its reception at a didactic level, by promoting the score in the framework of listening sessions commented upon as part of the discipline of the history of music. In what follows, I shall argue that the cycle of orchestral lieder Les nuits d´été by Hector Berlioz represents a work of equal importance to established opera. Key words: romantic composer, orchestral lied, text-sound relationship, critical reception 1. Introduction 1.1. Les Nuits d'été, Possible Meanings of the Title Unlike other works by Hector Berlioz, there is little documentary information about this ensemble of six poems on music entitled Les Nuits d'été, on the lyrics of Théophile Gautier. There is no such information either in the composer’s well-known Memoirs, or in his correspondence, as there is no piece of contemporary criticism about it. The only sources of information and documentation are the different editions of the musical score and especially the references to the personalities of the musicians to whom they were dedicated. Therefore, its subsequent reception makes it difficult to analyze the meanings and the significances of this opus. It is only natural to ask ourselves today whether this work, which escapes the grandiose life of Berlioz, who was at the same time composer, concert organizer, musical critic and librettist, could not be a more special way to his heart, to his most intimate thoughts. In other words, this composition invites us to address the source of inspiration of the opus, most often masked behind a musician appreciated mainly for the force of his orchestration. A work that was long considered minor in the evolution of an exceptional career of the nineteenth-century romantic musician Hector Berlioz, who was recognized by his ostentatiously displayed grandiloquence. This was the beginning of a piece of criticism Enquête sur un titre published in 2015 by Élisabeth Brisson in an online pedagogical journal. The quoted piece is part of a 52 Associate Professor PhD., “George Enescu” National University of Arts from Iaşi, Romania, email: [email protected] 59 wide exegesis (monographs, volumes of studies, reviews, essays signed by professional musicians or music lovers, men of letters), which was built around the preoccupations of the emblematic figure of artist Hector Berlioz. 2. Mistery of the silence surrounding a valuable opus. 2.1. Possible explanations depending on the manner of reception The first publication of the first version of the Les Nuits d'été score for voice and piano opus 7 (H 81 A) dates back to 1841 and it is the work of Adolphe Catelin, an editor with whom Berlioz cooperated between 1838 and 1843. Between 1837 and 1843, he also edited six other opuses by Hector Berlioz, which were republished in 1843 by another important editor of that time, Simon Richault, and who also handled the publication of the second edition, only for voice and piano (H 81 A) in 1855. In the Les Nuits d'été cycle or collection study (Rushton, 2016, pp. 112- 135), musicologist Julian Rushton argues whether the group of melodies published by Berlioz as Les Nuits "constitutes a collection of melodies belonging to a poet and composer, or it should be called a cycle, with all that this term implies for our understanding it as a whole" (Rushton, 2016, p. 112). Moreover, the researcher debates extensively on the two distinct versions of the musical score: the first, composed in 1840 and published the following year, is for voice and piano, whereas the second, the orchestration of which was performed at different times, was published in 1856 for voice and orchestra. "Although in 1841 the arias were designed for mezzo-soprano or tenor, with the exception of the 5th aria, which is for tenor, in 1856, in order to be suitable for the performers to whom they were dedicated, Berlioz transposed the second and third arias at different times and indicated a preference for male voices for the second and penultimate arias" (Rushton, 2016, p. 112). The same author questions the timbre parameter that is different in each aria. "Although Berlioz expressed his preference for the publication of all six arias in a single cycle, his compositional conception suggests little concern for a cyclical vision", argues the musicologist in the quoted study (Rushton, 2016, p. 113). Surprisingly enough, in another study, In the shadows of Les Nuits d'été, (Bloom, 2016, pp. 80-111), comprising six sections, (1. the issue of the year of creation of the Les Nuits d'éte cycle; 2. the appearance of the autographs on the manuscripts; 3. the relationship between Berlioz and Théophile Gautier; 4. and 5. the review of the cycle and of Berlioz's inner motivation when conceiving the music; 6. the analysis of the third aria of the cycle, Sur les lagunes, in an attempt to build what Berlioz would have called admiring criticism), musicologist Peter Bloom believes that "the work may be considered a cycle – i.e., a group of musical pieces that unfold logically in terms of both poetic discourse, and musical continuity" (Bloom, 2016, p.83). In order to understand the options of the two musicologists as concerns the performance of the opus as a cycle or as a collection of arias, some clarifications are required regarding the biography of the composer, which determined or influenced the writing of this work. So, just how well known was 60 Hector Berlioz in the music world in 1841? Born in Côte-Saint-André, close to Grenoble, in 1803, he moved to Paris in 1821, where, during his medical studies, he got enthusiastic about Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride opera and decided to embrace a musical career. Thus, in 1841, Berlioz had already composed a significant number of works: four symphonies, an opera, overtures, several melodies. Moreover, a performance of the Fantastic Symphony conducted by Antoine Habeneck took place in the Conservatory venue on 5 December 1830. Another performance took place during the official events of the Grande Messe des morts Requiem (1837), then the Funeral and Triumphal Symphony for chorus and orchestra (1840), these works being performed during public and private concerts, most of which were organized by himself. It is worth noting that in 1841 Berlioz was a very visible composer. In the light of this information, it is clear that during the composition of the six arias that we focus on, "the destiny of the musician Berlioz was fulfilled in his career as a composer, a surprising artist who, although he never demonstrated any interpretative skills (he did not play the piano, but he got a little familiar with playing the flute or the guitar), was very fond of literature: impressed by W. Shakespeare, then by W. Goethe’s Faust, he translated from Gérard de Nerval at the end of 1827 and became a close friend of V. Hugo and Théophile Gautier. In 1835, in the Le Temps magazine, it was Joseph d'Ortigue, the musical critic, who had already published a biography of Berlioz in the Revue européenne in December 1832, insisting on his triple filiation: Shakespeare, Beethoven and Hugo, that claimed he was the musical counterpart of the poet Victor Hugo (Brisson, 2015, p. 2). Let us not forget that the programmatic vocal-symphonic works completed before 1840 proved the important role that literature played for him. "Therefore, interested in various readings, Berlioz published numerous pages of musical criticism. We refer to his numerous reviews written between 1835 and 1863, as well as the musical criticism page he wrote in the Journal des Débats; to the memoirs written between 1838 and 1863. He is also the author of several programs and librettos, starting with the Fantastical Symphony, followed by Lélio, and continuing with the Damnation of Faust (1846), a very free adaptation of his source (Goethe’s Faust), then Béatrice et Bénédict (1860), Troyens (1861), and the through and close work with his librettists, Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier, for the Benvenuto Cellini opera of 1838" (Brisson, 2015, p. 3). Coming back to the documented study by Julian Rushton, Les Nuits d'été: cycle or collection?, we cannot help but noting the interesting debate on the themes of the melodies, a debate in which the author commented in general the poetical phrases in Gautier's text in a special aesthetic-analytical manner. 3. Les Nuits d'été. Poetical phrases In Berlioz's six lieds included in the Les Nuits d'été cycle, "one finds different key words defining the emotional state that must transcend at the moment of the interpretative act: the overwhelming brightness that dominates 61 the first and last arias, Vilanelle and L'Île Inconnue, the languorous sensuality of Le Spectre de la rose, the inconsolable expectation of the Absence, the dark affliction of the Sur les lagunes, or the sense of the dreamy specter in Au cimitière" (Rushton, 2016, p.

Load more